


of lovers and sinners

by mallasia



Series: A red thread of lightning [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Female Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15819168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mallasia/pseuds/mallasia
Summary: She had known the boy long before the monster.





	1. children: harrie and tom

**1\. Boy**

There had always been a boy next to her. Or perhaps, the better explanation would be: there had always been a boy by her side, holding her up while others tried to push her down. She didn’t quite know how long this boy had been by her side or when he had appeared, but all she had known was that the boy was there in the cupboard and later on every adventure she would partake, his body changing just as hers did.

And no one else could see him.

* * *

  **2\. Remembering**

Aunt Petunia is angry. She always is when she looks at Harrie, always is when she thinks she catches grey eyes standing slightly behind her niece but no one ever appears. Harrie doesn’t quite understand her aunt’s anger directed to her for it is an old one, an anger fit for myths of two estranged sisters. But she understands _anger_ , how could she not when its claws constantly try to enter her psyche and body?

**2.1**

Harrie’s hair is always short, cropped close to her chin and amassing in unrepentant curls. It is the one thing, beyond that oddly shaped scar that Harrie likes about her. It is the hair and the scar that Aunt Petunia doesn’t like about her. That and those green, green eyes that remind her too much of someone she once knew.

* * *

  **3\. Girl**

Uncle Vernon is cross. So very cross. Where Aunt Petunia is silent with her anger, a set of stern blue eyes and pursed lips, Uncle Vernon is red and constantly moving. His anger is constant and always about the most normal of things.

**3.1**

“Girl, pull up your socks.”

“Girl, straighten your hair.”

“Girl, get your grubby little hands away from that.”

“Girl, don’t you even dare.”

“Girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, girl…”

* * *

**4\. Learn**

Harrie learns to duck very early in her life.

* * *

**5\. Greed**

Dudley, for all his tantrums, doesn’t get angry. Instead he gets _greedy_. When he sees something in little Harrie’s hands - he makes sure to have it, takes it like an unrepentant god. The boy by her side sneers when Harrie goes to cry at her tender age of four when the ice-cream is taken out of her hand and goes into the great gullet of the great, big Dudley Dursley. But it was a hand on hers that stopped that.

**5.1**

“You don’t cry for them, little Harrie. You don’t cry for something that is taken. You take it, and take it, and take it. Until they learn to never take from you again.”

**5.2**

Later, when she is older, Harrie would be reminded of a god when she thinks back to this first lesson. A god of war who took what he wanted from a married woman and threw it in the face of a lame god. This boy that walked by her side, had always been a diminutive of Ares - a reminder to those who remembered the old, old legends. Legends, not truth for the gods were never real, but people still took to godhood better than the divine ever did.

And this boy who stared and took what he wanted, well he was ready to take that step to godhood.

**5.3**

Later, when she is much, much older, Harrie would wonder. Who was she to him? Enyo - Ares lover or Athena, the girl cut from the same cloth only sharpened compared to his bluntness.

**5.4**

Later, much, much later – she would wonder why she had never headed the legends that said: _never compare yourself to a god_.

* * *

**6\. Names**

She starts school at five. She smaller than most kids, thinner too. Aunt Petunia always looked at her and said, _no, not yet…wait_. And Harrie would wait but never get what she desired in the end and stomach – well, it could growl all it wanted for more but it had always been an empty cavern.

She begins school with paint and the boy by her side scoffs. He tells her of how he began with letters and he would draw them in the air, and she would paint them on the sheets. _As_ and _Ds_ and _Ms_ and _Us_.

She would spell, Mum and Dad. Papa and Mama. Mother and Father. Constant things for they were never by her side. It was perhaps, the one thing she would never be able to take. The one thing the boy could never show her how to take.

**6.1**

It’s the second week of school and they’re beginning to write their names. She writes it slowly, carefully: _Harrie Lily Potter_. She had known _Lily_ had come from her mum and _Potter_ had come from her dad and _Harrie_ , well Harrie is hers, isn’t it? It is hers and no one else’s. No one can take that from her.

**6.2**

It’s the witching hour. That odd, mysterious time between three and four in the morning. The time that didn’t feel like it belonged to the world but rather to something other. At eleven past three, Harrie is awake in that small cupboard underneath the stairs.

“What’s your name?”

It has been five years and for five years she has known him as well as she has known herself, but she has never known that name.

“Tom.”

* * *

**7\. Bird**

Tom becomes more apparent from then. Holding her hand, a warmth in winter and summer instead of the coldness her hands normally are. He takes one look at her, purses his lips and sighs.

**7.1**

The two of them don’t like how thin she is. Harrie hates her skinny little legs and Tom hates how those collarbones stand out prominently. She looks all but emancipated and the teachers, well they notice but they just don’t _care_. Tom is naturally thin, he isn’t gaunt and pale like her - veins crisscrossing over her body and bones so thin they may break.

 _Birdy_. He calls her. _Little birdy, too little for your soul_.

 _Snake_. She snarls, hating the words, the nickname. But Tom smiles, grins all prettily and Harrie becomes all but synonymous with _birdy_. _Birdy, birdy, birdy – why don’t you fly out of your cage?_

* * *

**8\. Children**

There’s two children running through Surrey, up the streets of Privet Drive. One has a riot of curls that go this way and that, wears boy clothes that are more than a little too big for her and dirt on her shins. The other no one can see, but follows like a trusty imaginary friend.

**8.1**

Though, we all know - he’s not exactly imaginary is he? Despite how many want to believe otherwise.

**8.2**

There is a man in a castle that looks to an invisibility cloak and wonders, not for the first and not for the last times.

* * *

**9. Hair**

Aunt Petunia takes one look at Harrie at six thirty-three in the morning and takes her arm and sits her down on a stool.

**9.1**

Tom kneels in front of her as the hair upon her head goes _snip, snip, and snip_. He tells her, “Do not cry. Do not cry. Do not cry. Do not cry.” She knows later that it is these words that make sure she doesn’t break at the possible ridicule that Petunia Dursley wishes to inflict on her niece.

She is shaved and she looks sick.

**9.2**

Aunt Petunia takes another look at Harrie with all her hair shaved off and tuts. Harrie can’t go to school looking like she does. There will be questions, no doubt about that. Terribly skinny, a ridiculous assortment of clothes and a shaved head compared to the overly plump Dudley, who wears nicely pressed clothes and a head full of hair. There will be questions, perhaps too many questions for her liking.

**9.3**

Above all else, the Dursley’s are purveyors of the term _perfectly ordinary_ and with little Harrie Potter looking like she does? Well, it’ll be a moment of _perfectly unordinary_ in what was originally a perfectly ordinary world. And they can’t have, no sir, no sir, not at all.

**9.4**

She shuts Harrie into the cupboard and tells the school that Harrie caught the flu. You know how kids are - running around, disrupting the neighbourhood, going to god knows where…of course she would get sick.

**9.5**

Tom sits in front of her with a smile on his face as Harrie sobs. And sobs. And sobs. There is no one to hear her, locked in the cupboard with Uncle Vernon at work, Dudley at school and Aunt Petunia gone to tea with a friend two houses down.

“Stop smiling, stop smiling - it’s horrid isn’t it? Look at it. I’ll be the laughing stock of the whole school.”

“What do you mean horrid? All I see is that mop on your head.”

And Harrie opens her eyes, lo and behold, there is her hair flicking in her eyes as it normally wants to do.

* * *

**10\. Magic**

She learns the term _magic_ that day.

* * *

**11\. Hunger**

Tom and her are magical, he says. Creatures that are more than a few steps above the Dursley’s. Harrie listens, raptured as always when Tom begins to explain. He doesn’t say much, but he decides to teach her.

**11.1**

It is night, the witching hour strikes again. Tom is next to her, slowly pushing her hands where they need to go to make sure that the door opens with an inaudible click. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia are sleeping and Dudley is likely playing games in his room. And little Harrie Potter is hungry like a _wolf_.

**11.2**

The door opens.

**11.3**

For the first time, Harrie is full. She had made sure to walk slowly into the kitchen - bypassing all the wooden creaks and groans of the house, wearing socks so her steps are muffled upon the tiled floor of the kitchen. She opens the pantry first - Tom tells her to take four slices from the breadbox, some cookies and savoury biscuits that Aunt Petunia hides away but always get eaten first. She opens the fridge next - Tom tells her to take some ham and cheese, a tomato and grapes.

“Won’t they miss this?” Harrie asks slowly as she savours the texture of the white bread in her mouth and the ham melting on her tongue.

“Listen,” Tom says.

Above, the ceiling of their little roof starts to shake and dust rains down upon their spoils. Harrie sneaks her eyes to the grill on the side of her cupboard door and sees Uncle Vernon taking more than he should.

Tom smiles and it says, _No, no they won’t_ _\- you just need to be sure when you can take it._

* * *

**12\. Cats**

Tom doesn’t like Arabella Figg. When Harrie sits in her lounge room, watching cartoons on the telly, Tom takes to following Mrs Figg around. Dudley has been taken out for his ninth birthday to the pictures with Piers Polkiss and Harrie had been left to fend for herself in a house smelling of cabbage.

Normally Mrs Figg makes her look at pictures of those ugly cats of hers, but today she had something else on her mind and allowed Harrie to do what she wished.

**12.1**

Tom wasn’t by her side, rather he was standing by the entrance to the room watching as Mrs Figg made a cake.

“She’s something like us.” He says, a finality to his tone. An impending judgement, Harrie just didn’t know what for.

“She’s like us?” Harrie asked, raising her eyebrows at this and looks over to where Mrs Figg was measuring out some sugar. Crawling across the couch to sit closer to Tom and to peer curiously at the woman, Harrie wonders.

Mrs Figg had always been _normal_ _thank you very much_ , so normal that Uncle Vernon had thought she could whack some type of normality into Harrie’s own freakishness. But Mrs Figg like her cats was a bit too _much_ to be normal. However, the Dursley’s only saw the normal side of Mrs Figg - perhaps this was what Tom meant, this odd nature of Mrs Figg. But, being a crazy cat lady does not mean being _magic_.

Of course, Harrie says exactly this to Tom and he only stares at her with a huff.

“Look there - see?”

“Where?”

“On the shelf?”

“There are many shelves.”

“There, right behind the tabby cat.”

“There are three tabby cats.”

“Yes, but only one, Harrie-dear is standing in front of a shelf.”

“Oh, yes – you’re right.”

“If only you realised this more often.”

“And if I did realise this more often, then you sir – why you would be very bored, yes you would.”

“Will you look at the shelf?”

“I’m looking at the shelf.”

“Do you see the book?”

“She has a lot of cookbooks – interestingly, not many on cabbages.”

“Cabbages?”

“Because it always smells like cabbages here.”

“Harrie.”

“Yes, Tom?”

“Will you focus?”

“Of course, Tom. Books…on the shelf…that are not books.”

“It is a book.”

“Oh, then which book.”

“Why the fifth book from the right, Harrie.”

“Oh, so it is.” Harrie stops here to tilt her head to the right, squinting her eyes while sounding out the title upon the spine. “M-mag-magic…is that…Magic Maldives? No, that makes no sense. Magic Melodies?”

“Magic Maladies.”

“Magic Maladies! So you say, gosh – you must have good eyes.”

“Harrie – I see what you see.”

“Never mind that now Tom. So – Mrs Figg’s a witch.”

“No, Harrie. I told you – she’s not a witch.”

“Then if she’s not a witch, what is she?”

“Magic but not.”

Harrie looks at Tom, “Do you ever not speak in riddles?” Tom grinned at that. Harrie takes a deep breath and then lets it go before looking back at Mrs Figg. “So, she’s not a witch and she’s magic, but not. Therefore, I’ve come up with the conclusion that _you_ are an arse. Tell me what she is.”

“I’m guessing she was part of the magical world, but never truly a part.”

“Why not?”

“She has no wand.”

“How do you know? Perhaps she’s hidden it away.”

“Trust me, when you see that world…your world. You will understand why no witch or wizard worth their salt, or even not worth it, would part with their wand.”

Harrie narrows her eyes and then moves out by the couch again. Tom stays there, watching the woman putter around. Harrie, in turn, watches him. Tom knew much, there was no shock there – he knew much and he hid much too. Harrie had learnt over the years that sometimes, to get that hidden information one must ask.

* * *

**13. Wand**

_Where is your wand, Tom?_

* * *

**14\. Silence**

Tom doesn’t speak to her for a whole week.

**14.1**

It becomes obvious straight away when Harrie and Tom don’t speak or interact in any way. Tom would sit outside the cupboard door during the night, with his legs bent and arms around them. Harrie would have called the scene sad could she see where he sat – but Tom always did go where she couldn’t see when this happened. During the day, Harrie would try to get Tom to talk to her, anything. During the night, he would hide.

But still she would scream and beg, for something, anything from his mouth.

But his was shut, a self-imposed silence that wouldn’t break.

**14.2**

It does break. Quite easily. But Harrie doesn’t know this.

**14.3**

The children at her public school seem to _know_ that something is wrong with Harrie Potter. Dudley leads the charge with rocks and scissors.

Though in the end, it is Dudley’s hair that turns blue and shorn like a sheep and Piers Polkiss’s hand that is stabbed in the finger. The other members of the group all have little hurts and pains but it Dudley and his right-hand man that suffer the brunt of the embarrassment.

**14.4**

She is locked in the cupboard for the weekend with no food and only warm water.

And no Tom.

**14.5**

Aunt Petunia would look at the sullen little girl that takes glances towards the window facing the garden. She’s cleaning the plates in the sink, standing on a wooden chair to reach the detergent and sponge. Aunt Petunia cranes her long neck to see what the little girl is staring at, but her gaze goes to where one of Mrs Figg’s tabbies sit, lazing in the sun.

She knows that the cat has done nothing to her niece beyond the few odd scratches here and there.

“Will you speak? I’m sorry.” Harrie says when she thinks no one is listening. “Oh for god’s sake, Tom! Will you speak to me?” There is a petulant whine she hears in Harrie’s voice, something she never hears from the little girl that looks too much like Lily. And Lily always did have a flare for the petulant tone.

“Harrie!” Aunt Petunia snaps from the dining room. She can’t get reminded, not of _her_ , that child in the room is why…no. Yes. She is.

There’s a little clatter in the sink and she winces, hoping that the little thing didn’t break something.

“Yes Aunt Petunia?”

“I want you to polish the silverware, Mr and Mrs Greenburg are arriving tomorrow and everything must be spotless! Not one mark on them, do you understand.” She points a long, narrow finger to her.

“Yes Aunt Petunia, I understand.”

**14.6**

Mr and Mrs Greenburg are wealthy clients of Uncle Dursley. Harrie is locked in her cupboard, however this doesn’t stop the oddities happening in the house.

The first thing that had happened was Mrs Greenburg had squeaked when she sat down on the sofa. In her hand was the toy car that Dudley had not played with for two years. The last time it had been used it had broken and the boy had thrown it away into the spare room not to be seen again. The second thing that happened was that the in the clearly labelled sugar bowl, Mr Greenburg had poured a heaping spoon of salt. The third thing that happened was that the kettle had turned on despite everyone being in the lounge room, laughing. Aunt Petunia had glanced over to Uncle Vernon who had excused himself to walk towards the cupboard.

Know this now, out of these things – only one was cause of magic.

Harrie had been leaning against the door, pleading with Tom as always before she fell out looking at the walrus of a man.

“Uncle Vernon!” Harrie said. His meaty hand took her hair and she winced as she came to her feet.

“No more freakiness out of you, girl! Do you hear me? No more.” She is shaken, shaken, shaken and her head hurts from where her hair was being pulled.

“But Uncle Vernon, I’m nowhere near you!”

“No more!”

**14.7**

Harrie is crying, sobbing quietly in the corner where the cobwebs make their home.

“Don’t cry. I know it hurts…but don’t cry.” Tom says and Harrie peaks through her fingers, glaring with poisonous green, green eyes. Had she been a snake, anyone would have ducked away with their arms raised defensively.

But Tom? Well, Tom was raised with snakes.

“Don’t cry.”

“So you’re talking to me now?”

“Harrie.”

“What was so bad about me asking? Hey? It was just a question!”

“A question you wouldn’t let up. I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“You didn’t have to ignore me for so long!”

“I am sorry, Harrie.”

“You’re not – but you should be! What happened out there? That was my fault. Mine! Don’t make me do that again. I don’t want him to hurt me again.”

“He will not. Not again.”

“Promise me. Swear it.”

**14.8**

_I promise._

* * *

**15\. Snake**

There is a snake sitting, there. And Harrie and Tom are both mesmerised by it. It was Dudley’s birthday today and Mrs Figg is sick and the Dursley’s wouldn’t leave a girl alone.

Harrie speaks to the snake. Tom stares at her as if he had never seen her before. Stares and stares and stares.

**15.1**

When the snake escapes, Tom laughs and laughs and laughs.

* * *

**16\. Hogwarts**

She gets her letter to Hogwarts and Tom’s eyes _gleam_.


	2. philosopher - a lesson in perceptions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is the year of friendless girls and odd boys, and how Harrie Potter brings them together.

_It’s an eclectic mix of friends Harrie Potter makes – purebloods, blood-traitors, half-bloods and mudbloods._

* * *

 

**Hagrid**

Harrie would have thought the man a giant had Tom said otherwise. Huge and hulking in the house on Privet Drive and so completely unordinary that she was shocked that a siren wasn’t going off. Uncle Vernon was red with fury and Aunt Petunia went white but instead of staring at the man, she looks over to Harrie who peaked out from the doorway to look at the newcomer. Harrie herself notices Dudley’s face peering around – for once, his attention not the telly but on the people in his house.

The girl had wanted to laugh at his face – his mouth had been open the moment he looked at the colossal man in front of them all.

“Well, where is she?” The man asks, a thick brogue to his voice that eats up half his words. Had it not been for Tom’s translation, she would have thought the man was speaking in another language.

“Where is _who_ ,” Uncle Vernon snarls. “Get out, get out! _You_ are not welcome here.”

“Vernon, Vernon,” Aunt Petunia calms, a wobble to her voice accompanied with a tremor to her hands. “Perhaps…perhaps it’d be a good idea to listen to him.”

“Smart lady,” Tom says, Harrie glances at him out of the edge of her eye. He’s leaning against the kitchen countertop, glancing appreciatively at Aunt Petunia which was a very odd thing to do. Odd indeed for most of the time, the boy held her blood relatives to the highest contempt. At eleven years old, Tom wasn’t very scary but that flash in his eyes – the change between grey and red and grey would make her stock-still despite the fact it was never aimed at _her_.

“No. We swore when we took that girl than we’d put a damn end to this! We swore, Petunia. That girl will have nothing to do with that lot.” Uncle Vernon snaps.

“Foolish man,” Tom sighs, head looking up as if asking for someone to give him strength, or in this case patience. Harrie understands this – her own reaction at the Dursley’s need to conform to the standards of normality made her nearly heinously ill. Harrie knew she wasn’t normal – there wasn’t an ounce of ordinariness within her bones.

Like there wasn’t an ounce of normality to the man trying to fit through the Dursley’s doorway.

“Dursley, you better tell me where she is or I’ll turn you into a toad.”

For a moment there was silence and then a great, big shout from Uncle Vernon which cause Aunt Petunia to shriek. It was almost comedic watching skinny Petunia trying to stop the great lump Vernon from rushing into the giant. Harrie would have been laughing had she known she wouldn’t get in trouble later.

Tom had no qualms about it.

It was at that moment however that the giant spots her.

“Harrie!” He says and sidesteps the two Dursleys. “Let’s have a look at you. Last time I saw you, you were this small,” he measures with his hands and Harrie just furrowed her brows. “And now look at you! You’re still small, that’s for sure – but you look just like your parents.”

Harrie stands, her hands fidgeting with the washcloth in her hands. She feels like an insect despite the kindness in the stranger’s eyes – but he was staring at her and Harrie had hated this feeling, like a creature at the zoo. But when he spoke of her parents, her whole demeanour changed.

“You knew them? Before the car crash?” Harrie asks. She only heard stories of an inebriated father and loose mother, while she didn’t hold much truth it was a constant tale among those who knew Harrie. There was never a nice word about them. She didn’t know their favourite music, whether they shared the same hatred for school and if they shared the same dream of wanting something _more_.

“Car crash? What car crash?” The great man asks.

“The one that killed them.”

“A car crash!” He was outraged and Petunia went white behind him. “A car crash killed James and Lily Potter! What stories have you been telling this poor girl?”

**Rubeus**

Rubeus Hagrid had been beside himself when he was given the responsibility of reintroducing little Harrie Potter back into the world of magic. He had expected a mix between James and Lily Potter in their child: kind and lovely but prone to a streak of mischievousness.

This however, did not come to pass and what Hagrid saw was something else. The girl had been quiet and shy, yes – but there was something different about it. Before she spoke, there was always a pause, a wait and then she would say something that he wouldn’t expect.

After all, Harrie Potter had known she was a witch for a very long time.

* * *

 

**Ollivander**

“Ah, yes – and now we arrive to the wands,” Tom comments and Harrie looks up from the book all about Hogwarts. Hagrid had come however would stay behind in Gringotts to finish off some dealings, which had caused Tom to watch him. Harrie, not caring about the business of the older man decided to explore the rest of the Diagon Alley and complete her school supplies list.

“Why wands? Can’t we already use magic without them? I mean, I can unlock the cupboard with it.”

“Wands are more…accurate. You could unlock your cupboard door, but then you could also unlock the front door house at the same time if you’re not careful with how much magic you give.” Tom nods towards the door to the wand shop, “Wands focus it.”

“If they’re so needed by our people, then why do we pay for them?”

Tom made a humming sound, a curious twinkle in his eye as he contemplated the question before saying, “Why give something out for free when you could make money of it?”

The inside of Ollivanders was dusty. Harrie watched the particles fly in the sun’s rays – dancing and falling and rising with each movement. The boxes of wands were haphazardly stacked, too many Tom would say for the entire population of Britain and Europe in general. There was movement to her left and Mr Ollivander comes out of the shadows like a wraith with really bad hair.

“I was wondering when I would see you, Miss Potter.” Harrie walks up the counter, looking at him and taking in the crazy demeanour, deliberating whether each person she would meet here would be as mad as the next. “Well let’s see now,” He clucks and looks down at her. “What is your wand hand?”

“Right,” Tom mentions in her ear and she parrots this back to him. Ollivander hums, coming to stand next to her. “Raise your arm, a bit higher than that Harrie-dear.” Tom tells her over her shoulder, transfixed on the wand-maker and the wands beyond them. And Harrie did as he bid, watching as the wand-maker ties several tape measures around her arm.

In the end, she has a wand made out of holly wood and a phoenix feather. Tom stares at it with a hungry look and not for the first time, Harrie wonders what would happen had he been able to touch more than her. Would he take that wand from her hand, ripping it out and using it however he pleased?

“Curious, most curious.”

“I’m sorry, curious – what is so curious?”

“The phoenix that gave the feather for that wand, gave another. A yew wand with the same core…why the man that wielded the brother of this wand gave you that _scar_.” He points towards her temple where the lightning bolt flared up with heat, Harrie touched it. She doesn’t quite realise what is _on_ her forehead, what it means – but now, she always has wondered.

“Who gave me this scar?” Harrie asks.

“A dark lord, a madman – someone who knew no better,” Tom replies, looking out towards the street of Diagon Alley.

“An evil man who did great things with that wand of his. Terrible things yes, but great.”

**Garrick**

The Potter girl looks at the shelf beside her and furrowed her eyebrows. He thought nothing of it, there were plenty of other witches and wizards that had their oddities and if he found it odd that this girl found stared into blank space, well he can’t say much can he?

“Who was he? This man that carried the brother of my wand?”

“We do not say his name.” Harrie still looks at that space,

“Voldemort.” Harrie states. He closes his eyes, the terror of the name washing over him and then looked down at the little girl.

He sees another boy in her place, a boy on the edge of childhood with eyes too old and a stare far too curious for the wizarding world. Garrick blinks once and the girl comes back into focus and those green, green eyes stare at him with a curiosity bereft of childhood and a stare that spoke of an age she did not have.

There were times he wondered whether sometimes he should say no to selling wands, especially to a child whose very existence was implicated so heavily in dark magic.

As the girl pays for her new wand and walks out of the door, he overhears, “You know about him then – about this Voldemort.” A silence. “Next time, tell me about him before I learn from someone else that he is the reason why my family is dead.”

* * *

 

**Bulstrode**

The door to the Dursley car slams and it speeds of in the distance leaving Harrie alone in front of King’s Cross Station. She struck a lonely figure – oversized clothes, a trunk that was easily greater than her and an owl in a cage. She was a fae creature, here one moment in the corner of your eye and the next gone.

Tom was leading, the station full and bustling with people; Harrie can spot the influx of the oddities of the wizarding world in what is a normally mundane society. There, a family of red-haired children all dressed in muggle clothes that didn’t quite match. There, a family of three with an air of ego around them. There, a duo of an old lady and a younger boy. There, there, there.

“How do we get there – do you see this ticket, it says Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. There’s no such thing as that here.”

“Harrie – think magic.”

“Tom, I know – but what’s curious is that some people can’t remember where something is because magic has hidden it.” Harrie snaps in return.

“It’s different.”

“What is?”

“Everything. Best you ask someone.” Harrie goes to where the red-haired family sits with the kind-faced older woman leading the pack. “No. Not them.”

“Then where?” Tom looks around, nodding to the duo. “No, Tom – are you serious?”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, what is wrong now, Harrie?”

“What’s wrong – that, that woman, if you’d even call her that? She looks ready to bite anyone’s head off!” Harrie whispers hurriedly back.

“Yes, yes – Augusta Longbottom was always like that, even as an annoying eleven year old.”

“I swear when you speak like that it makes you sound much older than you are.”

“Go and ask – trust me in this, she won’t send you away.”

With a petulant whine and look, Harrie lugs her items over to where the woman stands (and in particularly berating) with  the slightly pudgy boy. There was a fleeting moment where Harrie sees Dudley in him, but the boy’s shoulders were slumped and almost appeared subservient to the domineering nature of the older woman.

“Excuse me, sorry,” Harrie speaks up. The two look to her, “I was wondering if you know how to get onto the station.”

“You already are on the station, darling,” but there was nothing kind about the words despite the pet name that the older Longbottom said.

“Sorry – I mean for the station for the Hogwarts Express. It’s just – well, it ain’t here is it?” Harrie asked.

“Isn’t.” Harrie shoots a look at Tom. “Isn’t – not ain’t.” Harrie decides to ignore him, waiting for the other witch to speak.

“Three columns down and then you head straight through the brick with intent.” Harrie looked to the column she speaks of, where the last red-haired child disappears and she blinks, once, twice before shaking her head. “Oh I know, girl – I told them it’s much better to have a fireplace access, but that Dumbledore, always must have his way.”

“Oh yes, Dumbledore must always have his way,” Tom sneered and Harrie knows that this man must be awful.

The brick wall that Augusta Longbottom spoke of did allow her to travel from one station to another, despite Harrie feeling like she’d crash instead. What she came to see was something extraordinary.

The train itself must have been taken out of the late eighteen hundreds, meticulously kept with that bright red coat of paint and the steam floating around their feet. The station itself had a wide assortment of people from witches and wizards to the muggles that have come to farewell their children. Children of all ages came running to and fro between parents, some dressed in fancy robes and others in muggle clothes.

“They are they Malfoys,” Tom pointed out to Harrie – a family of three with fine features and blond hair. “Those, there – they’re the Flints. And they, over there, do you see Harrie, they’re Smiths.”

“And?”

“And?” He looked incredulous at the insinuation. “Harrie, these are the people that should look to you and bow at your feet.”

“But why?” Harrie asks.

“You are mine. That is _why_.” Harrie rolls her eyes, leaving her luggage to be placed upon the train with the other stack.

The wizarding children were boisterous creatures – giggling and running up the length of the train, yelling back at those behind them to keep up. There were all manner of creatures – rats, frogs, cats and toad. Harrie was pretty sure she saw a spider-like creature held between a three red-haired boys.

“Here,” Tom says. “This carriage.” Harrie peaks through the glass to look at the people inside.

There were two kids, both first years according to their robes which didn’t show their house colours. One was a large girl with short auburn hair and freckles and the other was a boy, much taller than most his age with ears like wingnuts and a large nose. 

Opening the door, Harrie goes inside and asks, “Hi! Do you mind if I sit here? Everywhere else is full.”

**Millicent**

When Millicent Bulstrode sat in the train carriage with Theodore Nott, she hadn’t thought much of the quiet boy. He had been introduced to her by their fathers and both children knew that for seven years they would be lumped together the way Malfoys were with Crabbes and Goyles.

At least, and this she hoped, their respective fathers thought they’d work well together for whatever reason. Looking at Theo with his third-year books about magical animals, she can see where they came up with the idea.

When the littlest girl she had seen on the train poked her head through the door, Theo and Millie’s duo became a trio.

They find out that her name is Harrie and nothing else from her. Millicent Bulstrode thinks that the girl is kind and lovely. She had the type of face and personality that would make Great-Aunt Violetta brim with happiness. But, she obviously didn’t know any decorum – after all, she placed her legs up on the train seats, crossed beneath her and her conversations were a little odd due to the small pauses Harrie took before replying.

But Millie’s father had always said that there was an oddity to every witch and wizard and one must be sure to take them in stride. And after all, Harrie’s oddity was simple compared to a few others.

They were talking about the uses of unicorn blood when the door to their compartment slid open and a bushy-haired girl stood there. Millie instantly knew that this girl was a muggleborn. She had seen her this morning on the train station with her muggle father and mother, assuring them that ‘ _yes, I will write, every day_ ’.

“Have the three of you seen a toad?”

At this Harrie looks up at her from the book in her hand, furrowing her brow and said, “I’m afraid not – but if you find the lady with the trolley, you can ask her to keep an eye out for you.”

“Oh yes, that is a good idea.” She then takes in the book that Harrie is reading. “Oh! Are you reading Hogwarts, a History? I read that cover to cover at least five separate times – what’s your favourite part?”

Here, the bushy haired girl sits down next to Harrie and Millicent only sighs. Its likely Harrie would prefer this girl over her – so articulate and well put-together.

“I must say, I did quite enjoy the section on the Hogwarts Houses! I was contemplating the merits of asking the hat to put me in Hufflepuff, if only to be closer to the kitchen. What about you, Millie?” Millicent looks up, shocked that Harrie is talking to her. She always was the throwaway child, the girl that others looked over for prettier faces like Daphne Greengrass, or girls with purer blood like Pansy Parkinson and even the novelty of the muggle-born bushy-haired girl in front of her.

But Harrie merely smiled and waited for her answer.

* * *

 

**Nott**

Harrie looks amazed by the Hogwarts castle but she was not the only one. Harrie spotted pureblood children look in wonder towards the moving portraits that greet them all happily, half-bloods who gestured towards the different hallways and the muggleborns who stared in awe at the enchanted ceiling above.

 Millie is talking a mile a minute into her ear, mentioning everything her father taught her about the castle. Harrie wonders at whether her own father would have taught her the same things – to be careful of the moving staircases, how to sneak around the castle. The larger girl also starts to speak of the classes she’s interested in and Harrie wonders what classes her mother preferred – Millie says her own mother loved Transfiguration and her father had enjoyed Herbology.

Theo was quiet next to her, only mentioning something that interested him and Harrie saw a pattern when it came to the tall boy: he like animals, anything magical would make those sapphire eyes of his light up. He would nod to a painting of a centaur, mentioning that there was a herd within the Forbidden Forest that he was hoping to meet one day. He would mention that he was beginning to learn the language of the merfolk that live within the Black Lake when a window they passed showed the body of water.

“He’s like his father – Thaddeus Nott.” Tom comments. “He was the same – adored animals to a point of insanity, the fact he found a wife that interested him enough to break him away from them? Well, I’m sure your Theo will be exactly the same.”

It was times like this that Harrie wondered much about the boy by his side. But before she could wonder more at the curiosity that was Tom, a tall woman with a stern countenance appeared before them.

“My name is Professor McGonagall,” she introduces herself. “Welcome to Hogwarts. Before you step through these doors, know this: when sorted into these houses, they will be your home, your family.”

Harrie looks up at this, eyes gleaming with _want_. _Family, family_ – god, she’s never had one, had she? Her first stolen away by a set of green curses and the second preferring berating verbal attacks and almost, but not entirely, physical punishment. Seven years of family, she wants – she would do awful things to gain this, awful, awful, awful things to keep it grasped in her hands.

The Great Hall was truly great. There was no other word to describe the brilliance within. Ahead, Hermione was recounting the history of the enchanted ceiling to someone who wasn’t interested. Harrie grasped the edge of her robes and Hermione looks back to where she walked with Theo and Millie.

“What spell is used?” Harrie asks with a soft smile. “Up there, the ceiling – for it to be so true to the skies outside?” Hermione leaves the ear of the thankful-looking girl ahead of her, but Millie gives her a glare making the girl blanch white. Hermione didn’t notice but Harrie did, and she glanced at the larger girl out of the corner of her eye. But Millie didn’t saying against why she stood with a muggleborn and not with the half-blood girl Hermione had been talking to.

“That’s the Sorting Hat!” Millie whispers excitedly and there it stood, upon a small wooden stool.

“And that is the reason why we’re so…disjointed,” Tom’s voice comes and Harrie felt that if he could, he would burn that old thing. Douse it in gasoline and watch it light up with a madness in his eyes and a hitch in his breath.

Professor McGonagall starts reading out names. Millicent Bulstrode and Theodore Nott go into the house of their forefathers, their robes lined with green and a snake proud across their hearts. Hermione Granger nearly has a hatstand before it places her into Gryffindor. Tom had an odd glee on his face whenever he made an accurate guess regarding certain sorting placements: Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle into Slytherin, Longbottom into Gryffindor, Boots and Goldstein and Corner into Ravenclaw, Abbott and Bones into Hufflepuff.

Had Harrie been able to gamble, using Tom’s predictions, she would have won a small fortune.  

After Padma and Parvati Patil were sorted into Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, the deputy headmistress said in a calm, collected voice, “Potter, Harrie.”

**Theodore**

Theodore Nott’s father always said to beware the half-bloods, especially those that were of the pretty sort. Theodore never quite understood his father in regards to the odd warnings he would say, but he always found there to be a truth and accuracy to his father’s words.

Harrie Potter was a half-blood and of the pretty sort. She had sat next to Millie Bulstrode who took up the space for two people but where the girl would normally be ignored and belittled by those who viewed looks just as important as blood, the other girl didn’t particularly care. And why would she – there were legends that she had been raised by muggles of all people.

She had looked interested in everything the other girl had said and when the muggleborn came, Harrie hadn’t ignored her but rather included her in the conversation as well as him. It was as if she heard their last names and not cared. And likely she had never heard of them before – to her names were just that: names. They meant nothing beyond an identifier.

Of course, that was the oddity because when Harrie Potter had introduced herself as _just_ Harrie, Theo and Millie hadn’t thought that she would be _Harrie Potter_ despite knowing she would be in their year. And she had sat the entire train ride with them and that bookworm of a girl without mentioning who she had been.

Theodore stares at her as she walks up to the stool, Millie seemed shock as well judging by her face. Everyone was waiting with baited breath to see where she would end up. He found it odd, but this girl was the one who had supposedly defeated the Dark Lord, the man his father had once followed during school and beyond.

Her sorting would define his schools years, just as hers would define everyone else’s.

The hat went on her head and faster than even Draco Malfoy’s sorting, it exclaimed, “Slytherin!”

And that was that.

* * *

 

**Snape**

Despite the common room being in the dungeons, there was an odd warmth to the space that wasn’t particularly helped by the black and green colour scheme. Harrie feels that this could be due to the look of happiness exuding by her side from Tom. The moment the prefect had said the password and she had entered his once home, Harrie understood what Hogwarts had meant to him.

She had watched the older kids come together, year groups blending and melding. Was this what Professor McGonagall had said about your houses being family? There were laughs and hellos and greetings. Harrie watched Draco Malfoy be greeted by several others – Flints, Rosiers and a Rookwood – almost wrapped into their embrace.

For a moment, she had felt alone – an outlier in this house. She had known both her parents been sorted into the ‘enemy’ house of Gryffindor, had known that in the past war people from both these houses were against one another. And she – the catalyst of it all?

It would seem right that not many would want to talk to her.

And the Slytherin children whose loyalty was set in stone generations before? Well, it was interesting to see the odd looks and stares she gathered from being only minutes here.

A cold hand slipped into hers and on her left side a presence made itself known. Millie to her right and Theo to her left, they had made up an odd trio: the Girl Who Lived, the Son of a Death Eater and the Girl with the Half-Blood mother.

This is how it should have been: Theo should have sat where Draco Malfoy, Millie with those numbered few who were not particularly pure by the old families and Harrie should have been run out.

But here, they stand together, against it all and believed themselves right in for standing against Slytherin’s staunch ways.

“Come, I think my father wanted me to talk to Pucey,” Theo says after a moment.

“Why?”

“My father knew his grandfather in school,” was all he had to say. And Harrie understood quickly: it was the previous generations that controlled the Slytherin dorm. It all mattered who your father knew and hated, who your mother had befriended and smiled coyly at. Had Tom not been by her side, she would have been lost in the children’s alliances, unsure who to stand by and who to ignore.

But he had insisted on Theodore Nott and he had not steered her wrong in the past.

Pucey was a third year with scars across his hands and an interested gleam in his eyes when Theodore Nott led the group to him. He had sat with a few others: two boys and a girl who Tom took one look at and scoffed.

Harrie understood.

“My, my, Nott – what’s your daddy going to think, hanging out with two Half-Blood girls?” He had a thick Welsh accent that clouded his words and wore a charming grin which he directed towards the girls.

“Considering who Millie’s parents are and who Harrie is, I reckon he’ll be fine.”

Pucey grins at that and looks over to Terrence Higgs that sat a few groups away, “Oi Higgs! You owe me ten galleons, I told you Notts are loyal bastards. Next thing you know he’ll have a mudblood by his side that he’ll defend.”

Theo glances at Harrie and they think of the same bushy-haired girl who wears gold and red, living in a tower high above them. It may not be truth, not yet. But Harrie gives a sharp grin and Theo nods once. Millie follows the exchange, her hand grasping at Harrie’s tightly and she just squeezes it back.

“Potter, right?” Pucey says, attention on Harrie.

“Obviously.”

“Smart mouth.”

“More like a smart head.” Harrie retorts.

Pucey grins, not charming but hungry instead, “Your dad was a Chaser, your grandfather a Beater.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Quidditch, love – they’re positions. Potters are nothing if not good fliers, whenever there’s one on the team, they usually win.” Pucey says. “Or perhaps that mudblood of a mother you had changed something so inherently in you, changed the Potter in you. I wouldn’t be surprised to be honest.”

She didn’t know what mudblood meant, not really – but she could guess by the way Pucey spat it. A venomous word filled with hateful rhetoric and disgusting beliefs.

“So? I would be happy if she did, she is my mother after all.” Harrie snaps, “Don’t call her a mudblood.

Pucey smirks, “Sure thing love. As long as the others are free game.”

“I don’t care.”

Pucey pursed his lips, head lolling to the right as he took her in with a new light, “You’re not exactly a Potter are you?”

Harrie takes in Pucey, lets her head fall to the left and stare at him lazily, “Want to know something interesting about living with _muggles_ that _hate_ magic?” At this, several heads turn, hearing the lethargic words escape from Harrie’s throat. “You learn nothing about your heritage, your magic is constantly berated and by the end, you hate it until you realise this is who _I am_. And then you decide to hate their ordinariness, their narrow minds and desire for normalcy. Why? Because you’re better, you’re magic. I don’t know the Potters because all I’ve known are terrified muggles – what do you think?”

And Harrie Potter, a child of the light, defeater of a Dark Lord, finds a home in Slytherin.

All because Petunia and Vernon Dursley couldn’t love a parentless child.

**Severus**

It hurts, there is no doubt regarding this. She is Lily’s daughter despite her abysmal attempt at potion making. She made the same face when something wasn’t going right and a soft huff of air that ruffled the unruly hair she got from her father.

He had watched her come into the classroom, bringing the young Nott and Bulstrode with her to sit by a bushy-haired Gryffindor who exploded in smiles.

He had watched her abysmally answer a question he asked her (albeit, it was from a fifth year textbook) and watched her glare when he had called Granger a _know-it-all swot_.

He had watched her stare blindly at a section in the room, whispering something unintelligibly under her breath and a soft smirk after a moment’s rest.

He watched her laugh when Millicent Bulstrode widen her eyes when she realised that she had done something wrong.

He watched her grimace at Theodore Nott’s crowing grin at finishing off something Harrie Potter couldn’t.

As they leave his classroom, Miss Granger who had looked so down at his rebukes was hugged close to Miss Potter, “Don’t worry, Granger,” She said with an arm around her shoulders. The Gryffindor had to lean down to accommodate the Potter girl’s short height. “We know you’re a know-it-all swot, but hey, it’s better than being a stupid idiot.”

He watched as the daughter of Lily Evans take one bored look at him and turned around, as if his very existence meant nothing. There was a cruelty to that look, a lack of care – an apathy that no one beyond a singular man knew how to convey.

He watched as the daughter of James Potter let out a different laugh when Millicent Bulstrode said something. Higher, breathier as if waiting for her last breath so she could stop laughing.

He decides then that he will ignore that little girl who’s too little her mother and even less her father. Severus Snape doesn’t know whether he is happy about this or not.

It hurts, there is no doubt about that.

* * *

 

**Malfoy**

“Malfoys have always been obnoxious peacocks on the best of days, on the worst they could be vile, vile creatures.” Tom had said when he spotted young Draco Malfoy early on in the sorting ceremony.

This observation had struck Harrie and whenever Draco Malfoy made fun of Ronald Weasley’s robes or laughed at Neville Longbottom’s bumbling attempts at life or even when he made fun of Justin Flinch-Fletchley’s muggleborn status, Harrie Potter rolled her eyes. Crabbe, Goyle and Parkinson would hang off his words, letting out pitches of laughter at whatever vicious diatribe he had to say.

Tom sees the way Harrie undermines Draco Malfoy by pushing Hermione Granger’s and Millicent Bulstrode’s own excellence in front of him. Shows that muggleborns and halfbloods are just as good, if not greater than these pure, pure creatures.

She watches with a bored look as the blond boy makes snide remarks about members of his own house and they took it with a tight smile. Harrie wonders how much that is the Malfoy name and how much that lies in the social contrives of the Slytherin House. She makes sure to sit by these house members, asking questions about how the wizarding society works even though she knows and lets them loosen up around her. She shows herself as an innocent little thing who doesn’t have a malicious bone in her body.

Tom knows this is false, judging by the way Harrie listens when she hears the secrets whispered by these children. About families, about individuals, about the Minister of Magic himself.

She peers down during Flitwick’s classes, watches as the boy makes fun of the red, red hair of Susan Bones. She watches as the little girl steadily become stiller and stiller; by the end not even deigning to move, terrified that if she does, Malfoy would pounce on something else she can’t control.

Tom takes in the way Harrie talks to Susan after class, Hannah Abbot standing close to her friend as the Slytherin asks questions of how to tame her hair. He wants to laugh because he knows that unmanageable hair has no chance to be tamed. It’s wild and ferocious like its bearer; it is the only thing that shows that Harrie Lily Potter isn’t the quiet, meek thing many come to know her as.

She watches as Draco puffs his chest like a peacock, challenging Ronald Weasley, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas to a Wizard’s Duel. By now, Harrie knows when Draco is lying and has no intention following through on his promise.

Tom watches as Harrie Potter befriends a trio of Gryffindors in the Third Floor of Hogwarts at midnight. She shows them how to escape Filch, bypassing the three-headed dog she found in the first week of school and opens up a secret passage way that leads directly to the Gryffindor Tower.

Harrie Potter brings the downtrodden, the weak, the unnamed, the leftovers and the unnoticeable to her. She befriends them with cheerful words, playful taunts and friendships that Tom knows will last a lifetime.  

**Draco**

Draco Malfoy watches Harrie Potter come through the grand doors that guard the Slytherin common-room from anyone not a snake. There is a silence to her movements, the way the others ignore her despite that odd, odd look in her eyes that speaks of something _old_ and _unknown_. Her look changes when she catches his eyes and Draco Malfoy knows that had this been a few centuries ago, he would be scarred and tried by Harrie Potter’s wand.

That glare – it is one he knew, but was never directed at him. Grandmother Druella would often times glare at his father, muttering about the luck he had that Narcissa adored him. His mother would have that glare whenever she was faced with a certain type of person in the boutiques and galas she visited.

It was a glare that said _you’re lucky to be alive_. A glare that belong to someone who didn’t care about the life behind someone’s eyes. A glare that belonged more on a ravenous hyena, waiting for some sort of weakness than a little eleven-year-old girl with too bright smiles and sunshine erupting out with every movement.

“Next time you decide to challenge someone at a wizard’s duel, keep it, you coward,” she sneers quietly into his ear. “You call yourself a Malfoy? Your father wouldn’t do this – your grandfather would be _horrified_ , that man would never have backed down from a challenge he made, even if he got a scar running up his abdomen in response.”

And Draco Malfoy knew this to be true. He just wondered how little Harrie Potter that lived with muggles knew.

* * *

 

**Longbottom**

When she is offered the broom, she takes one look at it and knows this is something that is _hers_ in the way that it’s _not Tom’s_. The broom answers her demand instantaneously while the rest continue to roll on the ground by the other student’s legs. The blue sky is above and Harrie wonders how high she could go before her body pleads for to finally return to the ground. She wonders if she could float so high that she’d be able to lie upon the fluffy bits of clouds that look fit enough to lie on.

There are many times Tom wishes that Harrie’s dreams are lesser, not as high and childlike as they are. He knows these dreams better than his own at this stage, and not for the first time he wished Harrie was a little more ambitious then what she currently is. After all, when her ambitions are as simple as:

I _need_ a family. A family that will stay by my side and not hate me for something I cannot control.

I _need_ friends. Friends that will not listen the hateful words from other about me, friends that will stand by my side.

I _need_ to fly. Fly higher and longer so my worries are nothing but little memories, forgotten behind me and forgotten by others.

I _need_ to catch that Remembrall. Neville prized that above all else. Even that frog of his.

They are very different from his own:

I _want_ to rule. Let those lesser than me fear me, and let not one person be better than me. Let the world run red if any dare to defy and let sinew coat the street as a reminder.

I _want_ to live. Forever and day, a constant entity on this world, a figure that controls and figure that knows.

I _want_ to learn. And only immortality can give me this and I can do this uninterrupted by ruling the world and having it fall by my feet.

I _want_ Harrie Potter. I _need_ Harrie Potter to do as I say. I _need_ Harrie Potter.

He will look at these differences one day, further in the future than he should have and he will realise that there was an odd overlap at the core of their ambitions. And he will realise that Harrie Potter and Tom Riddle have always been somewhat similar. He shouldn’t fear that their ambitions differ so much when in reality they do line up. Softly against one another, constantly undermining and aiding until they come together in a synergy most would not have.

But at that point, Tom Riddle hates Neville Longbottom because of the attention Harrie pays him. And how she would destroy any possible relationship with the Malfoy heir over the lumbering idiot. He of course, never realises how thankful he will be for the creation of this friendship.

**Neville**

Neville wakes up, his arm hurting and head throbbing. He knows he will never go on a broom again if he could – here is a reason why his feet are stuck on the ground and not in the air. It’s night-time, the clock striking the ungodly hour of three past three and Neville almost shouts in fear when he catches the movement out of the corner of his eye.

Harrie Potter sits there with a wand polishing kit in her hand.

“Hello Neville,” she says with a soft smile. “How are you feeling? I think Madam Pomfrey has given you some pain relief, but if you need any more – I’m sure we can scrounge something.”

“I think I’m good,” he whispered, hissing slightly as his hand twinged slightly. Harrie winces in sympathy.

“The last time I broke my arm it was fixed in a minute, I wish the same could apply here.” Harrie said. “Your housemates will be happy to hear that you’ll be okay. I think Dean mentioned something about teaching you to play football instead – it isn’t flying, but at least it’ll be fun. Perhaps I can convince Theo to play too.”

“He does go on about it enough.”

“Yes, he does,” Harrie laughed. “It’s either that or berating Seamus about blowing up another cauldron, isn’t it?” Harrie is quiet for a moment, before she says, “You know Millie’s quite good with plants. If you’re ever wanting to talk to someone about Herbology, I would talk to her – she was going on and on about Devil’s Snare yesterday and by god, I didn’t care one bit.”

“But Harrie!” Neville says, aghast and starts to go on a tirade why Devil’s Snare is one of the most beneficial plants wizardkind have come across. And Harrie listens, enraptured by the sheer enthusiasm he shows about his favourite subject. 

Come morning, Harrie is still by his bedside and earns Slytherin a deduction of ten points and another detention from Professor McGonagall after she spots the two together, when she came to see how Neville was. He feels awful about it, but Harrie merely brushes it off with a laugh and says that she’ll see Neville in Herbology.

Come Herbology, Neville has a new partner in Millicent Bulstrode, Harrie Potter sits in the table next to them with Theo Nott and Hermione Granger sits next to the rest of the Gryffindors on the other side. Harrie had been right after all. Millicent Bulstrode was an incredible herbologist in the making with the way she was going on about something they would only learn in fourth year.

* * *

 

**Granger**

Harrie is quiet when Halloween comes around. When she wakes up, she doesn’t feel anything and turns in her bed to face the boy by her side. He’s still sleeping, soft breaths and a young, relaxed face.

Tom inexplicitly loves Halloween. She had always known that it was this day every year that her parents had died – and while she knew now it wasn’t because of her drunkard father’s reckless driving but rather it laid at the feet of a man that was more of a monster, it still made her feel absolutely miserable.

When she came down to the common-room she flattened herself against the wall when Pucey laughed with a roar as Higgins chased him in a pair of boxers and a drawn-on moustache. Making sure she won’t be run over by Slytherin’s previous Seeker and their cackling Chaser, she quietly walked over to where Theo and Millie sat with Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini.

“I’m guessing that’s a marker that won’t wash off?” Harrie asks.

Daphne nods, “Until you say the magic words and knowing Pucey, who knows what he came up with.”

“Something derogatory is my guess,” Theo laughs.

“No, knowing Pucey it’ll be something discriminatory. The little idiot.” Harrie snaps. “I’m going down to breakfast.”

As Harrie leaves, she hears Zabini go, “What’s got her knickers in a twist? It’s just a bit of pure fun. She does know that most of the time we don’t mean it.”

“She wouldn’t understand,” Theo says.

“Especially with the way Pucey goes on about her mother.” Millie pities.

In a fit of anger, Harrie slams the ornate door behind her, watching as it smooths back out into the wall that guarded Slytherin from the rest of the castle. Her jaw trembles for a moment, before she closes her eyes and steadies herself. She gazes around once, twice and spots Tom a few metres away from her.

“Come on then, I think we have Charms first, you’ll be learning the floating charm if I’m not wrong.” Tom says, a hand outstretched and Harrie smiles softly, all anger dissipating.

The Charms room was decorated with festive orange pumpkins with different faces and white spider webs above. Today’s lesson was about the floating charm, but perhaps the better lesson was making sure you don’t say something rude to a person helping you. Hermione Granger ran away from the laughing Gryffindors and Harrie Potter chased after her.

She hears from a girl she thought liked her, “You’re a freak! You don’t understand anything. Everyone flocks to you because you’re lovely Harrie Potter.”

And Harrie’s face goes stony and she turns and leaves, letting Hermione cry in the toilets by herself. Her anger grew again.

**Hermione**

The troll makes a snoring sound and Hermione jumps. Harrie makes a face, poking the creature with the snot-covered wand in her hand. The other two Slytherins, Theodore Nott and Millicent Bulstrode, go to bring her back, but a sound from the creature has their self-preservation instincts flare up and stay behind. But Harrie continues forward, shooing what seemed like a fly from her face as she glanced at the troll.

“He was chained.” Harrie says finally. “Chained up tight.” A pause. “Who would have let him go?” Another pause. “Of course not…truly?” And another pause. “Do you think so? But he’s so…” And then a final, longer pause as Harrie hums softly under her breath. “I guess it would make sense, no garlic smell after all.”

Hermione decides then and there that the odd thing in green and silver would become her friend, even if she was a few knocks on the head from normal. Harrie may not be completely there, after all who would have a one-sided conversation, but she had come for her in the end. And she may have had her misgiving previously, and she may have said awful words when the other girl tried to calm her down after Ron’s words, but now, she sees she was wrong.

Later that night, when Slytherin gains fifteen points and Gryffindor loses five and Hermione tells her first lie, the two girls come to sit together in a hospital bed. Harrie is playing with a golden snitch she had nicked from the broom-shed and Hermione had her potions essay in her lap.

“Harrie?” The girl looks at her. “I’m sorry about what I called you.”

“That’s okay…” a little pause and then a softer smile she had ever seen on the other girl’s face, “Just don’t do it again. After all, if I’m a freak, then what does that make you?”

Hermione laughs, tears caught in her throat, “I guess I’m a bigger freak then you.”

“I guess you are,” Harrie laughs with her.

There’s a bit more silence beyond the clasp of hand against metal and pen against paper before Hermione breaks it again, “Harrie?”

“Yeah, Hermione?”

“I’m sorry for your mum and dad.”

“Thanks Hermione.” And Hermione knows then that Harrie needed to hear that today judging by the sudden shake in her body. She moves her parchment and pens off her body and goes to sit closer to the girl, saying nothing as Harrie’s body shakes and little whimpers explode from her mouth.

Yes, Hermione is happy that Harrie Potter is her friend, even if she’s a little odder than the average witch. But then again, that doesn’t say much, does it?

* * *

 

**Dumbledore**

She sits there, underneath the shade of the tree watching Millie and Neville bicker about some plant or another that they had brought without Professor Sprout’s permission. Theo and Hermione were conspiring about new spell creation over by the Black Lake’s edge.

Tom whispers in her ear, _Look how well you’ve done. They trust you, they follow you, they need you_. Harrie isn’t quite sure at the accuracy of her statements, beyond the first. But she wonders whether soon the other two are applicable.

These five are _hers_ , and may god help those who wish to take them from her. She’ll hold onto them with iron claws and fight for them with blood-red teeth. She knows she would and they have an inkling as to how far her need to keep them by her side goes.

They are not the only ones that sit with Harrie though, but they are those everyone knows she is closest to.

Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones sit together, practicing some spell or charm for second year. Tom tells her where they’re going wrong: _the wrist needed to be flexible to allow for the flexible nature of the spell_. Harrie walks over, lazy in her steps and watches with an even lazier look, and tells them what Tom says but just not in so many words: _you need to relax, Hannah and Susan you need to be a bit more rigid_.

Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan and Ronald Weasley are playing an explosive game of Exploding Snap. She makes sure the others step nowhere near them in fear that their parents will receive children with no eyebrows. She plays a game or two with Ron, which she loses spectacularly, laughing all the while she does. She had never been a winner.

As the afternoon winds down, the golds and pinks of the sky colour the sky and a sudden chill in the air despite the fact that spring has come. Harrie looks up at the castle and takes it in, this place that had given her all her dreams. It would be a few months, but she will return and next year she’ll return with her people, with her friends.

 _With her family_.

**Albus**

Harrie Potter doesn’t do what he moulds her to do.

Initially he had expected that Miss Potter would join Gryffindor house, but she doesn’t. Instead she makes her home in the coldness of the dungeons, ignoring young Mr Pucey’s remarks about her mother’s heritage and befriending Mr Nott and Miss Bulstrode.

Albus finds it interesting who she gravitated towards. The Notts and Bulstrodes have been age old families of pure lineage and high influence in the social circles that truly count. And the children of these bloodlines hold a loyalty towards the girl similar to a loved dog and a kind owner.

He thought that Snape would be malevolent towards the girl, considering who she looks most like. But he was quite ambivalent – marking her assignments with just passing grades. There were a fair few that would have failed and he is curious to see whether the girl would pick up on this if Severus continues with this trajectory.

Albus thinks of another boy he was ambivalent towards, over fifty years ago.

Minerva is besotted with the girl. In her own way of course, and she would never say anything to it. After all, there was a little shouting match between Oliver Wood and Minerva regarding the curious acquisition of Miss Potter and her broomstick. Beyond this, the student and teacher would share a cup of tea and go over the day’s transfiguration concept in her almost daily detention. It was odd, he noticed, that Harrie was taught better one-on-one rather than in a class setting.

Albus knows that the woman is much to close with the girl. Especially with the frightening similarities she bore with that boy of fifty years ago.

And this comes to the friendship between Miss Granger and Harrie. There was many a day he would find the two messy-haired girls outside near the lake with Harrie’s numerous friends. More often than not, Miss Granger would be going through the concepts using muggle terminology – airplanes for levitation charms, a torchlight for the light charm and cars for apparition. They would go through ideas and spell work far beyond their years and while they never tried it, he found it curious how they understood the fundamentals of their concepts.

Albus is struck with memories of a boy from his youth who he once shared similar beliefs with. They too would come to sit side by side and teach each other concepts they were too young for. But there was a freedom in youth that the buckling weight of adulthood doesn’t hold.

Quirrell was oddly close to her, eyes watching in the hallway and a hand on her shoulder during their Defence Against the Dark Arts class. It was odd however whenever he would look at Harrie, or rather look behind her or next to her. Staring at the blank air with a narrowed look in his eyes.

Albus found it odd that Quirrell handed in his resignation with a wry smile, saying he would be exploring Albania or the likes for vampires again despite his terror regarding his previous trip. Three weeks after his departure, Quirrell is found dead in the Romanian forest. His turban was blackened as if someone had set fire to the back of his head and its place was a burned concave skull.

Hagrid loves Harrie Potter who regularly walks down his hut, nearly breaks her teeth on his cakes and talks about the myriad of animals with him. She brings down Theo Nott with her after a while, and for a while the pureblood and older half-blood are quite wary of one another, but their similarities are too great. Albus has had many a meeting with the kind half-giant about the smashing nature of Theodore Nott.

Albus spots an album of photos in her possession during the last week at school. She and Neville Longbottom look through the pictures, sees a young Alice and a young Lily; the four rascals of Gryffindor; the laughing faces of James and Frank. They stay long on the photo that show their parents and their friends, a picture he knows taken in seventh year down by Harrie’s favourite space. It is a picture of friends, monsters, traitors and cowards; they do not know the legend, the truth of the story behind it and he hopes they never will.

It is the end of term and Harrie Potter sits out by that very spot by the lake with a group of first years from most of the houses. Children in red, green and yellow sit and around them, further in the distance sit other first years and around them the majority of the Slytherin House. It’s almost like a target with Harrie Potter in the middle.

Albus remembers another child, long ago who came and charmed a group of students. They were a pack of animals, wolves with blood on their teeth and wildness in their veins wrapped up in an elegant package of aristocracy. He wonders if this new group is different, and knows without a doubt that it very much is.

After all, Harrie Potter has little care of blood, quite like the younger Tom Riddle before the idea of pureblood supremacy twisted his mind.

Albus Dumbledore wonders whether Harrie Potter’s mind will twist and if it has started, what it was being twisted to think. After all, Harrie Potter all but ignores him when he’s close to her and if he tries to talk to her she slithers away from him, much like her house’s mascot.

It is clear to see that Harrie Potter wants something, perhaps something dangerous. And Albus Dumbledore is quite terrified of whether that something is that something dangerous.  

He looks towards the invisibility coat still in his possession and knows he had made the right choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this story! I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who pressed Kudos, left a comment and took the time to read the first chapter :) I'll see you for the second year in a few weeks!
> 
> If you'd like to say hi or ask questions, mallasia.tumblr.com is the place to find me! I'll be posting updates for the stories that will comes and hopefully I can start taking prompts and such later on, once university has finished for the year! I'd love to hear from you guys! <3

**Author's Note:**

> A look into how life would change if the Horcrux in Harrie was sentient.


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